Swedish Women On-Line, from the Middle Ages to the Present, 2.0 A Biographical Dictionary of Swedish Women, in Swedish and in English
Across the humanities there is a growing awareness of the importance of women’s agency and the significance of women as historical agents. Despite this, accessible documentary evidence of female agency through the ages remains largely absent. Swedish Women On-line (SWO 1.0), an infrastructural project financed by RJ is a major attempt to remedy this. SWO 1.0, formally known as Svenskt kvinnobiografiskt lexikon (SKBL), collates the biographies of one thousand significant women in the form of a digital dictionary and a structured database, to both support the dictionary and provide the groundwork for future research. The new database allows for data analysis which will generate new understanding of the complex forces which made Sweden one of the world’s most egalitarian countries.
The aims of project SWO 2.0 are numerous. This application seeks funding to expand SKBL by one thousand biographies, to further develop, complete and compile biographical data to allow statistical analysis and visualizations of the conditions women lived under, for technical development of the database and a mobile application of SKBL. Finally, the Swedish Language Bank has a steadily growing corpus of literature, newspapers, political pamphlets etc. which could be linked to women in SKBL who authored or were mentioned in these publications. This application thus also seeks funding for technical development of the database to enable dynamic links to this resource.
Final report
IN 18-04481
Final report, Riksbankens Jubileumsfond: Svenskt kvinnobiografiskt lexikon 2.0 (www.skbl.se)
Swedish Women On-line (SWO), from the Middle Ages to the Present, 2.0
A Biographical Dictionary of Swedish Women, in Swedish and in English.
1. Aims, development, and results of the infrastructure
Who were Sigrid Eskilsdotter and Maria Wessel? Did they have anything in common? The answers can be found in the National Biographical Dictionary of Swedish Women (SKBL) [Sw. Svenskt kvinnobiografiskt lexicon]. The former was the grandmother of Gustav Vasa and herself a politically influential noblewoman at the turn of the century 1500. The latter was a seamstress and a trade union pioneer in Malmö at the turn of the century 1900. Neither is particularly noted in the history books, but both were important in societies of their time. In SKBL, both are documented.
Well known for research in the social sciences and humanities is the difficulty of clarifying what women have done in the past. The causes, lack of interest and discrimination by the old legislation and socially based gender norms, are equally well known. Women's participation at different levels in society has therefore not been documented and preserved in the archives as corresponding to men. The result is that what women have actually done can be overlooked. The historiography thus risks becoming misleading, which is illustrated by the national biography Swedish Biographical Dictionary (SBL), where less than 10 percent of those biographed are women. By collecting, structuring, and presenting biographies as well as biographical data about Swedish women who have performed things of significance to society, the SKBL aims to supplement existing biographical works, including SBL, and to make material accessible for future research. On March 8, 2018, SKBL was launched and then contained biographies and data on 1,000 Swedish women, from the Middle Ages to the present. On September 1, 2021, the second round ended and then the content amounted to 2,059 biographed women with associated data.
SKBL is the result of a collaboration between the Department of Historical Studies, the Department of Literature, Religion and History of Ideas, the Language Bank and KvinnSam at the Library of Humanities. The Language Bank has been responsible for the development of the system and database, KvinnSam has been responsible for classification of the material, proofreading, linking and more, and the other participants have been responsible for editorial processing of texts and images, control and completion of biographical data, and input of the material into the database. In addition to the project group, 722 specialists, working at universities, museums, or other cultural institutions, have contributed as authors of the biographies. All material has been translated into English by professional translators. All in all, SKBL has been an extensive collaborative project and all material is freely available for research, international as national.
SKBL is thus both a database, with information that is quantifiable, and a dictionary, similar to the national biography. In the second round, which is hereby reported, the purpose of documenting the socially significant acts performed by another 1,000 women was an objective that has now been achieved. The project also aimed to supplement existing biographies with searchable and quantifiable data. That work has now been completed as far as the sources allow. It is thus possible to search and statistically compile the material based on a number of variables, either individually or in combination with each other. Activities, places, organisations, and keywords are those that are on the first page of the portal (simple search), but in the database, searches and compilations can be done on much else - only one´s imagination sets limits (advanced search). Another goal was to increase accessibility in various ways and create user-friendly functions that can also be used in teaching. On a map (https://skbl.se/sv/karta), sociograms can be designed according to the women's geographical connections (places of birth, death, education, activities and residences). It is also possible to arrange the biographed women chronologically along a timeline (https://skbl.se/sv/kronologi/901-2021).
However, the most important result is that in a searchable structured database there is now quality-assured documentation of 2,059 Swedish women who meet SKBL's selection criteria, ie women who have done a significant social work, internationally, nationally or regionally, and women who have been active in gender equality work. SKBL is thus a relatively unique digital resource, although there are predecessors in Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Canada and Denmark. However, some of these are based on analogue production, others have been built around certain specializations or require a special license to be used.
2. Use, integration, and long-term maintenance
SKBL is used to a large and widespread extent. As an example, it can be mentioned that SKBL is used as a resource in upper secondary and primary school, and that the demand for lectures by the project group has been great. During the period 2019-05-27 - 2022-01-11, which is the period we have statistics for, SKBL have had 756,848 unique page views, ie approximately 39,000 per month. About 78 percent of the page views concern the Swedish-language part, and just over 14 percent the English-language part
In addition to promoting the public interest and contributing to a lifelong learning, where foremost the biographical articles are noticed, SKBL is an integral part of the collections in KvinnSam at the Library of Humanities, University of Gothenburg. The staff there assists inquiries from researchers and performs any proofreading changes, and completions. The Language Bank is responsible for the long-term maintenance of the Karp system, which forms the basis for SKBL.
3. Deviations from original plan and staff
Initial staff changes and slightly changed technical solutions have taken place, partly due to the technical solutions proposed in the application becoming obsolete and replaced by others (see the follow-up report). The staff who have worked with SKBL on varying percentages of full-time are the team on the Karp-system at the Language Bank (Anne Schumacher, Jonatan Uppström and Kristoffer Andersson) and the librarians at KvinnSam (Karin Henning and Elisabeth Hammarberg) as well as editing, in-put and administration (Linnea Åshede, Måns Ramberg, Ulrika Lagerlöf-Nilsson, Irene Andersson and Maria Sjöberg). The contributions have been translated into English by Alexia Grosjean, St. Andrews and Margaret Myers, Gothenburg.
4. Accessibility and Open Science
Through contacts with Wikidata and the Bank of Literature, the current links to Libris (by and about the biographed women) were supplemented with links to the Literature Bank. This mainly applies to authors whose texts are collected in the Literature Bank. Wikipedia links to SKBL. Through the Language Bank, SKBL is part of Clarin, and thus a part of the EU's research infrastructure. SKBL has been presented at several international conferences in 2019, but due to the ongoing pandemic, planned conference participation in 2020 and 2021 could not be implemented. SKBL also includes a Nordic-based reference group, which, among other things, constitutes a forum for information dissemination. Articles and biographical data are published in SKBL through the Creative Commons license CC-BY. All authors in SKBL sign CC-BY agreements. The material is thus freely available to everyone - provided that adequate reference is made. Moreover, at skbl.se, the project group's work, methodology and selection processes are described in detail. The project group's work is also documented and archived in KvinnSam's collections.
Final report, Riksbankens Jubileumsfond: Svenskt kvinnobiografiskt lexikon 2.0 (www.skbl.se)
Swedish Women On-line (SWO), from the Middle Ages to the Present, 2.0
A Biographical Dictionary of Swedish Women, in Swedish and in English.
1. Aims, development, and results of the infrastructure
Who were Sigrid Eskilsdotter and Maria Wessel? Did they have anything in common? The answers can be found in the National Biographical Dictionary of Swedish Women (SKBL) [Sw. Svenskt kvinnobiografiskt lexicon]. The former was the grandmother of Gustav Vasa and herself a politically influential noblewoman at the turn of the century 1500. The latter was a seamstress and a trade union pioneer in Malmö at the turn of the century 1900. Neither is particularly noted in the history books, but both were important in societies of their time. In SKBL, both are documented.
Well known for research in the social sciences and humanities is the difficulty of clarifying what women have done in the past. The causes, lack of interest and discrimination by the old legislation and socially based gender norms, are equally well known. Women's participation at different levels in society has therefore not been documented and preserved in the archives as corresponding to men. The result is that what women have actually done can be overlooked. The historiography thus risks becoming misleading, which is illustrated by the national biography Swedish Biographical Dictionary (SBL), where less than 10 percent of those biographed are women. By collecting, structuring, and presenting biographies as well as biographical data about Swedish women who have performed things of significance to society, the SKBL aims to supplement existing biographical works, including SBL, and to make material accessible for future research. On March 8, 2018, SKBL was launched and then contained biographies and data on 1,000 Swedish women, from the Middle Ages to the present. On September 1, 2021, the second round ended and then the content amounted to 2,059 biographed women with associated data.
SKBL is the result of a collaboration between the Department of Historical Studies, the Department of Literature, Religion and History of Ideas, the Language Bank and KvinnSam at the Library of Humanities. The Language Bank has been responsible for the development of the system and database, KvinnSam has been responsible for classification of the material, proofreading, linking and more, and the other participants have been responsible for editorial processing of texts and images, control and completion of biographical data, and input of the material into the database. In addition to the project group, 722 specialists, working at universities, museums, or other cultural institutions, have contributed as authors of the biographies. All material has been translated into English by professional translators. All in all, SKBL has been an extensive collaborative project and all material is freely available for research, international as national.
SKBL is thus both a database, with information that is quantifiable, and a dictionary, similar to the national biography. In the second round, which is hereby reported, the purpose of documenting the socially significant acts performed by another 1,000 women was an objective that has now been achieved. The project also aimed to supplement existing biographies with searchable and quantifiable data. That work has now been completed as far as the sources allow. It is thus possible to search and statistically compile the material based on a number of variables, either individually or in combination with each other. Activities, places, organisations, and keywords are those that are on the first page of the portal (simple search), but in the database, searches and compilations can be done on much else - only one´s imagination sets limits (advanced search). Another goal was to increase accessibility in various ways and create user-friendly functions that can also be used in teaching. On a map (https://skbl.se/sv/karta), sociograms can be designed according to the women's geographical connections (places of birth, death, education, activities and residences). It is also possible to arrange the biographed women chronologically along a timeline (https://skbl.se/sv/kronologi/901-2021).
However, the most important result is that in a searchable structured database there is now quality-assured documentation of 2,059 Swedish women who meet SKBL's selection criteria, ie women who have done a significant social work, internationally, nationally or regionally, and women who have been active in gender equality work. SKBL is thus a relatively unique digital resource, although there are predecessors in Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Canada and Denmark. However, some of these are based on analogue production, others have been built around certain specializations or require a special license to be used.
2. Use, integration, and long-term maintenance
SKBL is used to a large and widespread extent. As an example, it can be mentioned that SKBL is used as a resource in upper secondary and primary school, and that the demand for lectures by the project group has been great. During the period 2019-05-27 - 2022-01-11, which is the period we have statistics for, SKBL have had 756,848 unique page views, ie approximately 39,000 per month. About 78 percent of the page views concern the Swedish-language part, and just over 14 percent the English-language part
In addition to promoting the public interest and contributing to a lifelong learning, where foremost the biographical articles are noticed, SKBL is an integral part of the collections in KvinnSam at the Library of Humanities, University of Gothenburg. The staff there assists inquiries from researchers and performs any proofreading changes, and completions. The Language Bank is responsible for the long-term maintenance of the Karp system, which forms the basis for SKBL.
3. Deviations from original plan and staff
Initial staff changes and slightly changed technical solutions have taken place, partly due to the technical solutions proposed in the application becoming obsolete and replaced by others (see the follow-up report). The staff who have worked with SKBL on varying percentages of full-time are the team on the Karp-system at the Language Bank (Anne Schumacher, Jonatan Uppström and Kristoffer Andersson) and the librarians at KvinnSam (Karin Henning and Elisabeth Hammarberg) as well as editing, in-put and administration (Linnea Åshede, Måns Ramberg, Ulrika Lagerlöf-Nilsson, Irene Andersson and Maria Sjöberg). The contributions have been translated into English by Alexia Grosjean, St. Andrews and Margaret Myers, Gothenburg.
4. Accessibility and Open Science
Through contacts with Wikidata and the Bank of Literature, the current links to Libris (by and about the biographed women) were supplemented with links to the Literature Bank. This mainly applies to authors whose texts are collected in the Literature Bank. Wikipedia links to SKBL. Through the Language Bank, SKBL is part of Clarin, and thus a part of the EU's research infrastructure. SKBL has been presented at several international conferences in 2019, but due to the ongoing pandemic, planned conference participation in 2020 and 2021 could not be implemented. SKBL also includes a Nordic-based reference group, which, among other things, constitutes a forum for information dissemination. Articles and biographical data are published in SKBL through the Creative Commons license CC-BY. All authors in SKBL sign CC-BY agreements. The material is thus freely available to everyone - provided that adequate reference is made. Moreover, at skbl.se, the project group's work, methodology and selection processes are described in detail. The project group's work is also documented and archived in KvinnSam's collections.